Obama picks Biden

Delaware senator adds foreign policy credentials to the ticket, but the outspoken running mate also brings some risk

August 24, 2008|By James Oliphant and Mike Dorning, Washington Bureau and Oliphant reported from Washington and Dorning from Chicago.

Perhaps as important to Obama could be Biden's connection with middle-class voters. Biden was born in 1942 in Scranton, Pa., the son of a car dealer. He still has strong ties to that state by virtue of his popularity in neighboring Delaware, perhaps giving Obama a leg up in that crucial battleground. His appeal to moderate, white Catholics could help shore up a weakness exposed in Obama's battle with Hillary Clinton.

Biden's was a solidly blue-collar Irish Catholic upbringing, one that left him a lasting template by which he has built his own life. He has devoted much of that life to raising his three children, Beau, Hunter and Ashley, famously commuting home to Wilmington, Del., each evening from Washington by train while they were growing up.

He has reason to be so doting. His first wife, Neilia, and baby daughter, Amy, were killed in a horrific car accident in 1972, just after Biden was first elected to the Senate. He has been married to his second wife, Jill, a teacher, for 30 years. His close-knit family circle includes his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, Biden's unofficial political adviser.

Beau Biden, 39, is now the attorney general of Delaware and a captain in that state's National Guard. Hunter, 38, is a Washington lobbyist. Ashley, 27, is a social worker. Because of the senator's blue-collar background, the fact that he has served in the Senate for virtually all of his professional career, and his single-minded devotion to his family, Biden has often referred to himself as the poorest member of the Senate.

2nd chance for Biden

Twenty years ago, Biden was, in a sense, the Obama of his time, a young turk of a politician with a gift for soaring, transcendental rhetoric. But his first bid for the presidency imploded in 1988 when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock that described the candidate's working-class roots. Biden was forced from the race after the campaign of eventual nominee Michael Dukakis circulated a videotape with Biden failing to give credit to Kinnock for a speech he gave in Iowa.

Biden, however, had credited Kinnock with the remarks in his other speeches, leaving many of his supporters at the time -- and long after -- feeling like Biden was pushed from the stage unfairly. Now, in yet another twist in this dramatic election year, the stage calls him again, two decades later.

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joliphant@tribune.com

mdorning@tribune.com

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